Creating Section 508

Compliant Documents
& Presentations
Prepared by:
Federal Transit Administration
Office of Administration
Office of Information Technology

Last Updated: 04/17/2007

Agenda
 What is Section 508?
 Section 508 Standards
 Creating Compliant PowerPoint
Documents
 Creating Compliant Word Documents
 Creating Compliant Adobe PDFs

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What is Section 508?
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973,
(amended in 1998 and codified in 29 USC §
794d) is a federal law requiring electronic
technology used by the government to be
accessible. Specific requirements are
maintained by the Access Board in the
Electronic and Information Technology
Accessibility Standards (36 CFR 1194).

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Some 508 Standards
 Provide a text equivalent for every non-
text element.
 All information conveyed with color should
be available without color.
 Row and column headers should be
provided in data tables.

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Microsoft Office
Overview
 Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are accessible to
most modern screen readers.
 Windows has features that allow screen readers
and other Assistive Technology (AT) devices to
interpret the document.
 There are several basic steps to make your
document Section 508 Compliant.

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Microsoft Office: PowerPoint
A PowerPoint file can be made 508
compliant by saving it as a Word
document. Simply follow these steps:
1. Select File  Send To  Microsoft
Office Word.
2. There are several options to choose
from. Select the Outline Only option
to save only the text from the slides.
3. The other options will copy the
individual slides into a Word
document and this can make the file
size large.

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Microsoft Office: Word
3 steps to make Word documents 508 compliant:
1. Create a structured document.
2. Provide descriptive alternative text for images.
3. Properly create and label tables, including
specified row and column headers.

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Microsoft Office: Word
Step 1
Document Structure Unstructured Document
 Provide a clear navigable structure
to your document
 A table of contents contains:
- Topics
Structured Document
- Subtopics
- Page Numbers
 Properly formatted documents have
a structure that Assistive
Technology (AT) devices can readily
access

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Microsoft Office: Word
Format and Styling
- Use the styles and formatting toolbar shown below to format text

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Microsoft Office: Word
Stylized Text
 Apply standard or custom styles and formatting rather than merely
altering the size or weight of fonts

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Microsoft Office: Word
Step 2
 Provide descriptive text for
images and graphics
 Use the “Format Picture”
dialog to add descriptive
text
 Right click the image to
access the object menu
 Select “Format Picture”

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Microsoft Office: Word
Format Picture Dialog
 Select the “Web” Tab
 Add text for images that
describes the content of
the image
 Decorative images that
convey no information
may be left blank

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Microsoft Office: Word
Step 3
 Properly creating tables is
also key to accessibility
 Rather than drawing lines
and inserting tabs to mimic
columns, tables should be
created using the table tool
 Select Table  Insert
Table to access the table
dialog

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Microsoft Office: Word
Inserting Tables
 Basic tables can be
created using the insert
table dialog
 AutoFormat will bring up
another dialog that
presents a selection of:
 Preformatted tables styles
 Advanced formats for
headers, columns and rows

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Microsoft Office: Word
You should have learned how to:
 Create structured documents by properly
applying text styles with the Styles and
Formatting toolbar
 Provide Alternate Text for images and graphics
with the Format Picture dialog
 Create and label tables using the Insert Table
and Auto format dialogs

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Adobe PDF
Overview
 Adobe Portable Document Format (PDFs)
can be made accessible
 PDFs must be tagged correctly to be
accessible
 There are resources available to assist in
making PDFs 508 compliant

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Adobe PDF
What are PDFs?
 PDF is an open source file format commonly found on the
Internet.
 There are 3 types:
 Legacy: old format designed to print
 Scanned: image of documents
 Tagged: structured documents
 Only by opening the file can you determine the type. All end
in .pdf extension

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Adobe PDF
When is a PDF accessible?
 PDFs are accessible when tagged correctly.
 Tagging involves:
 Converting the scanned image to text
 Specifying reading order across columns
 Adding descriptive text to images

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Adobe PDF
Documents easily made
accessible
 PDFs composed of text in a
single column
 PDFs with minimal graphics
 PDFs with simple tables
 Convert properly tagged
Word documents to PDF
format

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Adobe PDF
Checking for Accessibility
 Mouse over all images to see if an alternative
text message appears. (Note: This functionality does not
display with Adobe reader inside of Internet Explorer web browser;
you must view PDFs in Adobe software.)
 Use the Adobe Reader “Read Out Loud”
function (under View menu) to see if the
document makes sense (have speakers on).

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Additional Resources
 www.microsoft.com/enable/microsoft/section508.aspx (in
particular, see “Tutorials & Training”)
 Creating Accessible Adobe PDF Files: A Guide for
Document Authors
www.adobe.com/enterprise/accessibility/pdfs/acro6_pg_
ue.pdf
 www.section508.gov/
 www.fta.dot.gov (Home  About FTA  Doing Business
with FTA)

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